scholarly journals Unmasking Power in the Discourse of Four-Year Graduation Initiatives

10.28945/4636 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 145-166
Author(s):  
Veronica Adele Jones ◽  
Ryan A. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Developmental Courses ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
University Leaders ◽  
Individual Success

Aim/Purpose: The following questions guided this study: 1) What are the major types of four-year graduation policies and plans being implemented by public four-year colleges and universities? 2) What explicit and implicit messages do leaders convey in constructing four-year graduation policies and plans? 3) What messages might four-year graduation policies and plans send to minoritized student populations? Background: Four-year graduation is a common goal across public institutions; to this end, university leaders often construct a four-year graduation policy or pledge. Scholars have not systematically examined the discourse within these policies to uncover the underlying structural barriers that may hinder minoritized students from achieving this goal. A one-size-fits all approach in policy can inadvertently promote a discourse of individual success or failure. Methodology: In order to view policy as discourse and explore the tensions within the narrative of timely graduation, the authors utilized critical discourse analysis to explore the discourse within four-year graduation plans across 19 public, four-year universities. Contribution: Institutional leaders often attempted to create mutually responsible commitments with students, but our reading of four-year graduation plans suggests that the majority of leaders created a uniform narrative, failing to acknowledge and make provisions for disproportionate impacts on minoritized populations. Findings: Utilizing seven building tasks, we provided descriptive categories of four-year graduation initiatives, followed by interpretation and evaluation of the messaging conveyed by institutional leaders in constructing policies. Findings revealed that many universities often place expectations on students with varying levels of corresponding resources or without the needs of minoritized student populations in mind. Recommendations for Practitioners: The authors offer recommendations about ways that university leaders through policy creation can acknowledge the structural barriers that affect students’ pathways to completion. Recommendation for Researchers: Because of the underlying acceptance behind the problem that drives graduation policy (i.e., students should graduate in four years), a critical approach allows scholars to examine the text of policies in ways that might illuminate the viewpoints that leaders fail to consider. Impact on Society: Four-year graduation initiatives should move beyond inspiring rhetoric to tackle the true structural barriers (e.g. unavailable courses, weak advising, developmental courses as stumbling blocks) for which institutional leaders as the creators of policy should be held accountable. Future Research: Additional studies focusing on the rhetoric of student success initiatives can reveal language centered on dominant ways of knowing.

“Sharia on a Plate?” A critical discourse analysis of halal food in two Norwegian newspapers

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thomas ◽  
Amina Selimovic
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Halal Food ◽  
The Media

Purpose – This study aims to explore how two Norwegian national online newspapers, Dagbladet and Aftenposten, have framed halal food in the past 6 years (2008-2014), a period conflating with a rise in Muslim demographics in Norway. Design/methodology/approach – A mixed-methods approach is used. Employing among others a Hallidayan transitivity analysis and other approaches from critical discourse analysis (CDA), clausal semantic structures, collocations and nominalizations were explored with a view toward fleshing out ideological significance. Particular attention was given to the neologism – “covert-Islamization” – popularized by the populist right-wing Progress Party. Findings – The findings reveal that Dagbladet refracts halal food through a discourse of crime and other dubious frames tapping into topoi of Islamophobia. Halal is, in this manner, transformed into a synecdoche for deviance. This is contrasted with Aftenposten’s more “halal-friendly” gaze which inter alia is attributed to greater access for Muslim contributors (over 40 per cent), with nearly all authorship penned in the aftermath of the Breivik massacre of July 22, 2011. Research limitations/implications – As a comparative research that explores two newspapers – albeit with substantial national circulation – there are obvious limitations. Future research could explore the contents of Verdens Gang, the biggest newspaper in Norway, and perhaps incorporate iconic semiotic content. Social implications – The prevalent media discourse on halal in Norway casts a shadow over a fundamental aspect of the identity construction of Norwegians who adhere to Islam, thus highlighting issues of belonging and citizenry in the “new” Norway. National discourses of identity and belonging impact upon the Muslim consumer’s perception of self and ethnicity, and how these perceptions are negotiated in the interstices of a skewed media coverage of halal certainly serves to undermine this self-perception. Originality/value – Several recent studies have broached the subject of the manifold representations of Muslims and Islam in the media using a CDA, but there is a dearth in studies with a specific focus on halal food. This study contributes to the lacuna in the literature in an area of growing importance, not just as a socio-political and religious phenomenon, but a lucrative commercial project in a Scandinavian context.

scholarly journals Representation of immigrants in New Zealand print media: A critical discourse analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Neda Salahshour
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Print Media ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Economic Resource ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Entry Points

<p>Representation of Immigrants in New Zealand Print Media: A Critical Discourse Analysis  New Zealand is often perceived as one of the most diverse countries in terms of its population, with “more ethnicities in New Zealand than there are countries in the world” (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). According to the 2013 census, 39% of people who live in Auckland, New Zealand’s most immigrant-populated city, were born overseas. In such a setting, the issue of social harmony becomes important. Media institutions hold power and therefore their representations play a significant role in how immigrants are perceived and whether they are embraced and welcomed or resisted. It is for this reason that media discourse deserves attention.  Research in this area in the context of New Zealand has been limited and furthermore has leaned towards content analysis or a purely qualitative analysis of a specific diaspora. Addressing these issues, my research aims to gain a better understanding of how immigrants are discursively constructed in the New Zealand Herald newspaper during the years 2007 and 2008. Given that the Global Financial Crisis began to make its presence felt in 2008, this study also sought to investigate expected discrepancies in the representation of immigrants during economically challenging times.  Grounded within a critical approach, this study adopts methodic triangulation; that is, the data is analysed using two complementary analytical frameworks, namely that of corpus-assisted discourse analysis (Baker, KhosraviNik, Krzyzanowski, McEnery, & Wodak, 2008) and the Discourse-Historical Approach (Reisigl & Wodak, 2009). Using these two frameworks, I use statistical information as entry points into the data and explore significant collocations which contribute to the construction of dominant representations. This analysis is followed by an in-depth analysis of systematically sampled news articles with the aim of identifying the ii various discursive and argumentation strategies commonly employed in print media.  The findings from both analyses point to a rather ambivalent representation of immigrants. On the one hand, immigrants are constructed as being qualified and playing an important role in filling skill shortages in New Zealand. This positive construction depicts immigrants as an economic resource which ought to be capitalized. In addition, liquid metaphors, previously argued to dehumanize immigrants and construct them as uncontrollable (KhosraviNik, 2009) are surprisingly used in my data to construct the immigration of large numbers of immigrants to New Zealand as essential. On the other hand, immigrants are also constructed as threateningly Other or passive victims. Therefore, immigrants are not only constructed as beneficial to New Zealand society but are also represented as being problematic.  This study identifies a unique representation of immigrants in the New Zealand Herald which could perhaps be explained by the unique socio-political and geographical context of the country. The triangulation and methodic rigour of this study also ensure that the findings are generalizable to the whole dataset and contribute to current understandings of immigrant representation and approaches to the study of discourse and representation.</p>

scholarly journals Uncovering whiteness as discourse: A critical discourse analysis of the in-state resident tuition debate for undocumented students in Texas

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Nicholas Tapia-Fuselier ◽  
Veronica A. Jones ◽  
Clifford P. Harbour
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Postsecondary Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
State Resident ◽  
Undocumented College Students

Undocumented college students in the United States encounter a number of structural barriers to postsecondary education success, including disparate in-state resident tuition (ISRT) policies across the country. Texas, the first state to establish ISRT benefits for undocumented college students, has been a site of tension respective to this issue over the last 20 years. In fact, there have been eight legislative attempts to repeal the state’s affirmative ISRT policy. In order to investigate this ongoing ISRT debate in Texas, we used critical discourse analysis methods to analyze the implicit and explicit messages communicated in the policy and surrounding policy discourse. Our conceptual framework, grounded in three constructs of critical whiteness studies including ontological expansiveness, color evasiveness, and individualization, allowed us to uncover whiteness as a pernicious undergirding force within this policy discourse.

scholarly journals Negotiating partnership models in the humanities: The possibility of collaboration within undergraduate English courses

2020 ◽  
pp. 147402222094482
Author(s):  
Eloise Symonds
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Collaborative Processes ◽  
Methods Of Learning ◽  
Partnership Models

Recognising the popularity of partnership models, this article questions the current literature on partnership within the humanities and explores the possibility of effectively implementing partnership within the English discipline, through exploration of the traditional modes of learning associated with specific disciplines and the barriers that exist through the traditional teacher-learner dynamic. It considers the difficulty of breaking down both the conventional learning methods of reading English and traditional hierarchies in universities in order to foster more collaborative processes. In this article, I use Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis to explore 32 interviews, 12 observations and 12 policy documents from two post-1992 English universities. Negotiating partnership models in the humanities requires further exploration, with attention given to conventional methods of learning associated with disciplines, traditional learner-teacher hierarchies and the structural barriers these associations create for establishing collaborative learning relationships between academics and undergraduates.

Framing and blaming in times of economic crisis: The rise and fall of the “Rudd Recession”

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 814-836
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Diffusion Resistance ◽  
Critical Periods ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis

This article takes a critical approach to the language used by Australian politicians during the global financial crisis of 2007–8. Critical periods in history provide a rich substrate for the appearance of new expressions with the potential to frame the debate, influencing the ways events are interpreted and blame attributed. Passing unnoticed into usage, such memes have the potential to become part of unexamined background knowledge and covertly co-opt hearers and users into shared systems of value and belief. The study focusses on one specific neologism deployed by opposition politicians, firstly in an attempt to create the erroneous impression that a recession was occurring and secondly that it was the fault of the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. Patterns of occurrence were tracked against local and international events, indicating a life cycle with several distinct phases: chance emergence, a strategic deployment, cross-genre diffusion, resistance and eventual rejection. Keywords: Alliteration; critical discourse analysis; economic crisis; blame; political discourse; slogans; social media; memes.

Reflections on discourse and critique in China and the West

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-507 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Chilton ◽  
Hailong Tian ◽  
Ruth Wodak
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Shared Understanding ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Traditions ◽  
Chinese Scholars ◽  
Discourse Practice ◽  
Intellectual Environment

The term “critical”, as used by scholars writing under the banner of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), is in need of review in a new global intellectual environment in which diverse philosophical and political traditions are increasingly in contact with one another. This essay is particularly concerned with the question of how a shared understanding of the concept of the critical can be developed among Western and Chinese scholars. To this end the paper gives an overview of notions of critique in the historical traditions of China and the West, addressing issues of conceptualisation, discourse practice and translation. This leads us to consider, from a “critical” point of view, what the appearance of the “critical” approach may mean in the Chinese context. The need for continued dialogue oriented to a deepened understanding of existing ideas and approaches is highlighted.

scholarly journals The Empire and the Egyptians

2006 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-168
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Eide
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Western World ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Analytical Approaches

Abstract This article explores how three different analytical approaches to texts may work together to a certain extent in a critical approach to journalistic representation, in this case of the “non-western” world. Focusing on short news items dealing with the nationalist uprising in Egypt in 1919, the texts are analysed using critical discourse analysis, but also inspired by Said’s Orientalism critique, Bourdieu’s field theory including the notion of journalism as an autonomous field, albeit with a weak autonomy.

scholarly journals Black Male Students Negotiate Ways of Knowing Themselves During Digital Storytelling

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Becky Beucher ◽  
Robyn Seglem
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Black Male ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Male Students ◽  
Black Literature ◽  
Black Male Students ◽  
Black Adolescent ◽  
The Core ◽  
Literature Class

We explore how valuing Black male students’ literacies within academic contexts during multimodal writing can position students’ ways of knowing at the center of their learning. This centering requires a repositioning of students’ cultural literacies at the core of instruction. Using multiliteracies and Critical Discourse Analysis frameworks, we analyze and share excerpts from conversations with three Black adolescent high school seniors as they composed and reflected upon authoring digital autobiographies for an assignment in their Black Literature class. These reflections illuminate how the students drew on culturally salient texts to share elements of themselves with their peer and teacher audience.

scholarly journals Hoax Analysis on Social Media Corpus to Develop “Kapak Hoaks (Hoax Axe)” Model: A Study on Critical Discourse Analysis

E-Structural ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (01) ◽  
pp. 69-81
Author(s):  
Sukma Fatmawati ◽  
Rizky Salzabila ◽  
Galang Aulia Rizkitama
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Research Needs ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Critical Literature ◽  
Analyze Data

Abstract. In globalization era, hoax has been widely spread on social media and disturbs the well-built relationship of Indonesian people. Even it often breaks the unity of people. Lack of knowledge in how to identify hoax has let readers be hypnotized to believe that the news is real. This study is aimed to develop "KAPAK HOAKS (HOAX AXE)" model (Reader's independence in analyzing hoax content). This study uses the theory of CDA model of Fairclough by Umar Fauzan (2013). The study method used in this article is qualitative method with critical linguistics study approach. The authors of this study have collected analysis theories of critical literature able to be used to analyze data of hoax circulating on social media. The analysis is conducted by matching data corpus with the chosen theory. Through the analysis, the authors have identified language aspects supporting self-checking improvement. It is also mentioned by Eriyanto (2001) about hoax analysis. To reach perfection, this study considers that the future research needs to involve response test on social media readers' positive independence in responding hoax.Keywords: corpus, hoax, linguistics, semiotics, social mediaAbstrak. Di era globalisasi, hoax telah merajalela di media sosial dan mengganggu silaturahmi masyarakat Indonesia yang terjalin baik. Bahkan seringkali merusak persatuan umat. Kurangnya pengetahuan tentang bagaimana mengidentifikasi hoax membuat pembaca terhipnotis untuk percaya bahwa berita itu nyata. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengembangkan model "KAPAK HOAKS (HOAX AX)" (Kemandirian Pembaca dalam menganalisis konten hoax). Penelitian ini menggunakan teori model CDA Fairclough menurut Fauzan (2013). Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam artikel ini adalah metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi linguistik kritis. Penulis penelitian ini telah mengumpulkan teori analisis literatur kritis yang dapat digunakan untuk menganalisis data hoax yang beredar di media sosial. Analisis dilakukan dengan mencocokkan korpus data dengan teori yang dipilih. Melalui analisis, penulis telah mengidentifikasi aspek bahasa yang mendukung peningkatan pemeriksaan diri. Hal tersebut juga dikemukakan oleh Eriyanto (2001) tentang analisis hoax. Untuk mencapai kesempurnaan, penelitian ini memandang bahwa penelitian ke depan perlu melibatkan uji respon terhadap kemandirian positif pembaca media sosial dalam merespon hoax.Kata kunci: corpus, hoax, linguistics, semiotics, social media

Performance management discourse and the shift to an administrative logic of operation: a multimodal critical discourse analytical approach

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Ledin ◽  
David Machin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Web Of Science ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Value For Money ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
A Chain ◽  
The One

AbstractThis paper, using multimodal critical discourse analysis, explores a chain of performance management documents in a university which aim to meet the goal of increasing output and excellence. A system of performance management developed by Kaplan and Norton in the 1990s, which enables both tangible and also “intangible assets” such as “quality” and “excellence” to be monitored and measured, is now used fairly universally to structure the running of public institutions. Looking in detail at one case, we show that the result is an abstraction and de-contextualization of processes and agents, through a series of interlocking texts, lists and tables that follows an administrative, rather than task led, logic of operation. We show how the discourse is legitimized on the one hand by the very impenetrable nature of the resulting interlocking documents and by the Web of Science database on the other. We give reasons why the database itself is highly problematic and also show the abstract ways in which it is communicated and how it leads to research in all subject areas being codified and standardized in a “one-size-fits-all” way. This, we argue, serves the purposes of naturalizing and justifying notions of “quality,” “excellence” and “value for money” that have been promoted in service of neoliberal politics.

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